First Avenue Is Dead (Long Live First Avenue!)

By DAVID CARR

Published: November 15, 2004

The notice posted in front of the United States Bankruptcy Court here on Friday seemed to promise a particularly dreary proceeding.

''Expedited hearing on motion of trustee for approval of settlement and authorizing trustee to sell certain property free and clear of liens,'' it read.

But on the other side of the swinging courtroom doors, it was apparent that the ''certain property'' was not dreary at all, but part of the bedrock of pop-music history: First Avenue, a legendary club, where both Prince and the Replacements first roared into view. Housed in a former bus depot, the club was shuttered this month after years of squabbling between its principal owners, Allen Fingerhut, an art gallery owner, and his childhood friend and former business manager, Byron Frank.

The conflicts that led to this moment were banal, if complicated. Mr. Frank bought the building with some business associates four years ago. During that time, First Avenue struggled against larger trends in the music business and increased local competition, losing hundreds of thousands of dollars along the way.

At the beginning of the summer, Mr. Fingerhut, the owner of the club and of its liquor license -- the building and the club were owned by different entities -- removed the two men who were widely believed to have made it the most important rock venue in town: Stephen McClellan, who booked the bands, and Jack Meyers, who managed the business. The move did not go over well with longtime First Avenue fans.

Business continued to deteriorate, and Mr. Fingerhut began to bicker with Mr. Frank. ''It became like the Arafat story: was it dead or not?'' said Martin Keller, a local scenester. Mr. Fingerhut ran into money problems and after a series of failed negotiations was served with an eviction notice by Mr. Frank. There were several lawsuits and on Nov. 2, First Avenue closed.

The tug-of-war was as much about the club's legacy as it was about its future. Who would ''own'' the memories: The first time U2 came to the bar and confronted a show-me crowd with a performance that knocked them down hard? Or the night that Prince and a few buddies sauntered into the Seventh Street Entry, a smaller bar within the club, and played straight-up blues for an hour? Or when, during a Replacements concert, the Scandinavian-inflected crowd changed a chorus, ''We are the sons of nowhere,'' to a shouted, ''We are the sons of Norway''?

Who would take credit -- or blame -- for all the bad coke, bloody noses, vomit and bliss, not to mention the ghosts, like the girl who committed suicide in stall five in the women's room?

''There were so many shows with so many transcendental memories, both the good and horrible stuff that happened,'' said Slim Dunlap, who worked at First Avenue as a janitor and later as a member of the Replacements. ''I'd be there cleaning the place eight hours a day and then get plastered all night. I always worried about the place because you knew it hung by a thread, but they did hang in somehow.''

When it closed, though, the diehards had little to comfort them but a morose tick-tock of what had been lost, from opening night with Joe Cocker in 1970 with dozens of people onstage to the club's lionization in Prince's 1984 movie ''Purple Rain.'' Mayor R.T. Rybak, who once stage dived at First Avenue during a ''Rock the Vote'' event, compared its importance to that of the Guthrie Theater or the Minneapolis Institute of Art. ''Like those other institutions, it shows that Minneapolis is at its best when it doesn't try to imitate anybody else,'' Mayor Rybak said, sitting at the Grand Bakery in south Minneapolis.

There are a few rock clubs in the country with the cultural weight and history of First Avenue: CBGB in Manhattan, Maxwell's in Hoboken, N.J., the Metro in Chicago and the 9:30 Club in Washington come to mind. But there are very few that can lay claim to launching such a diverse wave of indigenous music. It wasn't just Prince who broke in here, but also the Time featuring Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, not just the Replacements, but H?r D?d Soul Asylum. There was a time in the 1980's when First Avenue made a noise big enough to shake the whole country.

But as radio conglomerated and curdled, and live music became a dicey, increasingly competitive business, people stopped going to clubs three or four times a week.

Empty nights at First Avenue became desperate ones, and Mr. Fingerhut was behind on insurance, taxes and the rent. Mr. Frank said he had offered to lend Mr. Fingerhut money, but was turned down. But by Mr. Fingerhut's account and according to a document sent by his lawyer, Mr. Frank's final offer was instead a push for complete capitulation that would have left Mr. Fingerhut out of the club and saddled with debts.

Mr. Fingerhut took the club into bankruptcy on Nov. 2.

''I got beat out of my bar fair and square, but I don't want to be attacked anymore,'' he said. ''How can I be the bad guy in all of this? I lost $800,000 and half my hearing keeping this place going as long as I did.''